Hints to Preachers

Verse 1 (first clause).—The incidental blessings resulting from considering the pious poor. 1. We learn gratitude. 2. We see patience. 3. We often remark the triumphs of great grace. 4. We obtain light on Christian experience. 5. We have their prayers. 6. We feel the pleasure of beneficence. 7. We enter into communion with the lowly Saviour.

Verse 1.—The support of the Small-pox Hospitals recommended.—Bishop Squire, 1760. Scores of sermons of this kind have been preached from this text.

Verse 2.—“Blessed upon the earth.” What blessings of an earthly character godly character secures, and in general what it is to be blessed with regard to this life.

Verse 2 (second clause).—What it is to be delivered in trouble. From impatience, from despair, from sinful expedients, from violent attacks, from losing fellowship with God.

Verse 3.—Strength in weakness. Inward strength, divinely given, continuously sustained, enduring to the end, triumphant in death, glorifying to God, proving the reality of grace, winning others to the faith.

Verse 3 (last clause).—The heavenly bed-making.

Verse 4 (first clause).—A saying worth repeating: “I said.” It expresses penitence, humility, earnestness, faith, importunity, fear of God, etc.

Verse 4.—“Heal my soul.” I. The hereditary disease, breaking out in many disorders—open sin, unbelief, decline of grace, etc. II. Spiritual health struggling with it; shown in spiritual pain, desire, prayer, effort. III. The well-proved Physician. Has healed, and will, by his word, his blood, his Spirit, etc.

Verse 4.—“I have sinned against thee.” This confession is personal, plain, without pretence of excuse, comprehensive and intelligent, for it reveals the very heart of sin—“against thee.”

Verse 5.—What we may expect. What our enemies desire. What we may, therefore prize, i.e., the power of Christian life and name. What we should do—tell the Lord all in prayer. What good will then come of the evil.

Verse 6 (first clause).—The folly and sin of frivolous visits.

Verse 6 (second and third clauses).—Like to like, or the way in which character draws its like to itself. The same subject might be treated under the title of The Chiffonnier, or the rag-collector. What he gathers; where he puts it—in his “heart;” what he does with it; what he gets for it; and what will become of him.

Verses 7-12.—On a sick bed a man discovers not only his enemies and his friends, but himself and his God, more intimately.

Verse 9.—The treachery of Judas.

Verse 11.—Deliverance from temptation a token of divine favour.

Verse 12.—This text reveals the insignia of those whom grace has distinguished. 1. Their integrity is manifest. 2. Their character is divinely sustained. 3. They dwell in the favour of God. 4. Their position is stable and continuous. 5. Their eternal future is secure.

Verse 13.—I. The object of praise—Jehovah, the covenant God. II. The nature of the praise—without beginning or end. III. Our participation in the praise—“Amen and Amen.”

The ancient rabbins saw in the Five Books of the Psalter the image of the Five Books of the Law. This way of looking on the Psalms as a second Pentateuch, the echo of the first, passed over into the Christian church, and found favour with some early fathers. It has commended itself to the acceptance of good recent expositors, like Dr. Delitzsch, who calls the Psalter “the Congregation’s five-fold word to the Lord, even as the Thora (the Law) is the Lord’s five-fold word to the Congregation.” This may be mere fancy, but its existence from ancient times shows that the five-fold division attracted early notice.—William Binnie, D.D.

God presented Israel with the Law, a Pentateuch, and grateful Israel responded with a Psalter, a Pentateuch of praise, in acknowledgment of the divine gift.—J. L. K.

HERE ENDETH THE FIRST BOOK OF THE PSALMS.